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  • Maxime Weygand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars
  • Robert J. Young
Maxime Weygand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars. By Barnett Singer. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing Company, 2008. ISBN 978-0 7864-3571-5. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 255. $35.00.

It took six weeks for France to fall in 1940, not much longer for the reputations of its military and civilian leaders. So sudden was the defeat of a Republic that had been too slow to act, so sullied the nation by the actions of the ensuing Vichy regime, that there was neither place nor sympathy for the impartial. With individual reputations at stake, distancing oneself from the villains and embracing the angels of 1944-45, became a tiresome national pastime. Nothing better to salvage reputations than to stand on the mounds of those one sought to bury.

This book has the difficult task of discerning fact from fiction in the still-thick fog of charge and counter-charge, for it addresses the controversial life of General Maxime Weygand: right arm of General Foch in the Great War; chief of the French defence staff in the early 1930s; suddenly the Third Republic's commander-in-chief in 1940; just as suddenly Vichy's Defence Minister and subsequently its Proconsul in North Africa; a man distrusted and imprisoned by the Germans, a man distrusted and tried by the French.

Barnett Singer admires him, and so defends him against the bitter, adhesive accusations of General de Gaulle and his loyalists. Weygand, they alleged, had contributed to the ill-preparedness of the pre-war army, had recommended surrender over resistance in June 1940, and subsequently had served an anti-democratic, anti-semitic, pro-Nazi regime. But Singer will have none of it. Apart from his "unquestioning idolatry" of Foch, (p. 6) Weygand had few flaws. The lapses in military preparation after 1935 were not of his doing; the call to rescue France in 1940 came too late; he was contemptuous of the ardent collaborationists, never ceased to regard Germany as the enemy, and to that end ensured that Vichy intelligence services operated on that premise. A practical man who distinguished between resistance and suicide, a patient man who knew Hitler's fortunes eventually would falter under the weight of America and Russia, Weygand, says Singer, was a supreme example of Vichy Resistance.

While certain to be controversial, it would be fair to say that this argument is neither novel nor unique. After all, it was pioneered by the general himself, reprised by many of his fellow accused, and not infrequently is reclaimed by scholars who know that Vichy was anything but an homogeneous phenomenon. Singer is one such. A proven, accomplished scholar, he offers a work well informed by archival sources and oral interviews and by a vast range of secondary literature – including sources on personality formation. Partisan, he surely is, but he would claim only so in the face of that evidence. This is a fast-moving, reader-sensitive text, written with a verve uncommon to academics; and it is a passionate defence of an individual he considers to have been too long maligned and too little understood, a military hero as well as a writer of exceptional stature. If History ought to be presented unequivocally, if historians should avoid the insipid, then this is a resounding triumph. [End Page 303]

"If " with a small question-mark. Those familiar with scholarly conventions will be arrested by the star bursts of academic iconoclasm. We are not used to having contractions like "hadn't" spread so plentifully on our plate, or colloquialisms, exclamation marks, italicized emphases, and parenthetical asides. And predictably, some may conclude that the traffic sometime gets snarled at the intersections of narrative, explanation, and advocacy. For instance, while Weygand is ever discerning, masterful, and above all a patriot, his stature can only be improved when compared to Franklin Roosevelt (pp. 128,132) or when contrasted with the "equally inept" generals Joffre and Gamelin (p. 12), the "boring" premier Paul Reynaud —accused here of "killing his mistress…in a car accident" —(pp. 176, 179) the "oddball" premier Edouard Daladier...

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